Your review reminded me of lots of 8-bit stuff. Sometimes it remains legitimate to this day that an 8-bit game only gets more difficult by getting faster, or throwing more enemies in the same space. But as you say, some takes on this (like in Beat em) are just impractical.

I have an Apple II game called Genesis which is controlled by a paddle, and it's not just that the playfield gets faster, but the response to the controls becomes aggressive to the point that if you turn the paddle fast enough, you can 'teleport' around the screen, rather than move through all points inbetween. Given you may wish to teleport past gaps in the wall your spider is walking on, this could be considered an advantage, but in the end - the game only has 6 levels, and I think that was just the manner of programming at the time. They just attached the speed of -everything- to whatever level you were on, and didn't really evaluate the consequences.

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Indeed. Even though it was essentially the same game as Beat 'Em, I always enjoyed Kaboom! Maybe it was the better control response that made it a better game, maybe it was the fact that it was a blast (pun maybe intended) to play with a friend. I actually became quite good at that game for a while, and haven't been able to rise to such a competent level today.